Hauser: ARM will 'obliterate' Intel

ARM co-founder Hermann Hauser predicts that the sun is setting on Intel's dominance of the microprocessor market.

ARM has declared its intentions to dominate the future of computing, declaring industry giant Intel a dead duck due to a misunderstanding of what customers want.

The comments came from ARM co-founder Hermann Hauser during an interview with The Wall Street Journal, in which he declares that 'ARM is going to kill the microprocessor.'

Hauser goes on to clarify his remarks: 'the reason why ARM is going to kill the microprocessor is not because Intel will not eventually produce an Atom that might be as good as an ARM, but because Intel has the wrong business model. People in the mobile phone architecture do not buy microprocessors. So if you sell microprocessors you have the wrong model. They license them.'

That distinction between Intel, which designs and manufacturers its processors, and ARM, which designs the processors for other companies such as Texas Instruments, Marvell, and Samsung to licence, refine, and build themselves, redefines the battle, says Hauser: 'it’s not Intel versus ARM, it is Intel versus every single semiconductor company in the world.'

Hauser is clearly betting heavily on ARM to take over the PC industry, claiming that 'there is no case in the history of computing where a company that has dominated one wave has dominated the next wave and there is no case where a new wave did not kill the previous wave - as in obliterate them,' declaring the era of Microsoft and Intel to be drawing to a close.

It's hard to argue with ARM's corporate performance: this year the company has collected more revenue from its licensed designs than Intel has on its microprocessor sales, while still allowing its customers to make a profit of their own from the chips they manufacture. Increasing interest in the low-power chips from netbook, ultra-portable, and even server manufacturers shows that ARM's long absence from the desktop and server markets could be drawing to a close.

Intel, for its part, unsurprisingly disagrees with Hauser's comments, claiming that 'there's room for many [different architectures] to be successful,' but it's clear that the company is rattled by the potential of ARM's designs - and this is the first time in many years that Intel, the giant of the server world, has entered a battle as the underdog.

Do you agree with Hauser that the sun is setting on traditional microprocessor manufacturers and that the future belongs to ARM, or would you need to see a high-end ARM design with the same performance as one of Intel's Xeon chips before you gave up on the x86 giant? Share your thoughts over in the forums.

Hopefully ARM will advance to 64-bit sooner rather than later so that we can actually consider the architectures in a somewhat equal fashion. Right now they've confined themselves to small consumer devices.

Originally Posted by Article'itâs not Intel versus ARM, it is Intel versus every single semiconductor company in the world

There is no Intel V Arm war, this is just media overhyping, both can co-exist relatively peacefully together.

With the way that each semiconductor producer can have an ARM chip redesigned and altered for their particular needs, I wonder if we are going to have a return to the multi format PC's of days gone by, where you had BBC's, Acorn's, IBM's et al all vying for the dominance of the home PC market.

I think we'll go through a period of this again, where different platforms are avalaible for the desktop, and then something new will come along and standardise everthing again, as seems to be the way of things...

Seems like a pretty daft comment to make. Intel have the wrong business model? Really? So why is it they own the PC market when it comes to processors (making Billions)...oh right, coz their model is wrong. Sure. ARM may be winning with little things but Intel still rule for the proper computers.

I don't actually understand how ARM can possibly "obliterate" Intel in any way other than the mobile phone sector.
Hauser's reasoning seems to have no-scope other than the mobile phone sector, and while it may be true that mobile phone manufacturers are more than happy to licence products from ARM at the moment, it doesn't apply for the future of technology or indeed for any of the other electronics orientated markets out there. System makers for Server and Graphics rendering companies will almost certainly not want to bother licensing a design and then making it themselves, when they can just buy in the latest batch of Intel processors,

In the big scheme of things Price is the the biggest controlling factor in any companies expansion, and If ARM ever brings out a product to compete with x86 then Intel will merely lower its price and provide a cheaper and because of its long history in the desktop and laptop computing markets, OEM's wont have to change the way the systems are designed and built.

The only battlefield these two cross is tablet devices and yes I think arm will win simply because
win 7 + atom < android + arm
or some optimised os for such micro processors.

Atom was an attempt to sell **** to whoever was buying and move old stock. Compare it to say snapdragon, atom is hot and power hungry for the intended market. Phones arn't far off handling full 1080p playback yet look how many netbooks struggle without a GPU to back them up.

arm will definitely succeed in low-end devices, imo thats a given. intel is NOT doing a good job on low-end stuff - they overprice everything, they're relatively too power consuming, and they do stupid things like put their crappy integrated graphics on the cpu package. however, arm is way too cocky to think that they will obliterate intel as a whole - x86 is WAY too dominant to get replaced. if x86 wasn't so dominant, companies like amd would have gone with a new architecture by now instead of trying to compete against intel, and microsoft would have created windows for PPC a long time ago.

you are all forgetting that the mobile phone market IS the future of PCs.

In two years, when your phone can communicate with your TV / monitor in HD, what is the need for a beefy laptop desktop for the 80% of business users? Most use their PCs for Outlook, mail, excel and web apps.

There will still be the PC gaming market, but again that may shrink as new generations of consoles come out.

What happens when they release a console designed around the idea of multiple processors / cores? All they would need to do is add in a slot where you could slip in another processor and bam, simple upgrade for the middle of that consoles lifecycle.

With Office online / google apps, etc there is even less of a need for a device running windows. As long as you have a standards compliant browser & a internet connection (lets hope those phones have em!), and you have instant access to your files. (with a business supported server farm of course to keep 3rd parties away from mining your corp data)

Originally Posted by zero0neyou are all forgetting that the mobile phone market IS the future of PCs.

In two years, when your phone can communicate with your TV / monitor in HD, what is the need for a beefy laptop desktop for the 80% of business users? Most use their PCs for Outlook, mail, excel and web apps.

There will still be the PC gaming market, but again that may shrink as new generations of consoles come out.

What happens when they release a console designed around the idea of multiple processors / cores? All they would need to do is add in a slot where you could slip in another processor and bam, simple upgrade for the middle of that consoles lifecycle.

With Office online / google apps, etc there is even less of a need for a device running windows. As long as you have a standards compliant browser & a internet connection (lets hope those phones have em!), and you have instant access to your files. (with a business supported server farm of course to keep 3rd parties away from mining your corp data)

mobile phones will replace generic computer use but it won't replace office computers, high-end computers, gaming computers, or really any kind of specialized computer. nobody is going to want to type an essay, type out a report, do some extensive research, software development, filling out databases, filling out forms, play full-blown commercial games, etc on a phone. its impractical, even if you have a separate screen. if you have a separate keyboard and mouse, you still have to make sure the phone is compatible with software you actually need.
remember, the reason x86 is still being developed is because almost every single computer intended for direct user control uses x86, so to design something different will be incompatible. google apps are pretty good but they're not the best, and companies like microsoft are not going to let them get known too easily.
btw, ibm and sun has released products where you can just slip in more CPUs and RAM a long time ago, its just a really expensive technology. now nvidia has it with cuda servers.

If that were the case zeroOne, laptops would've obsoleted desktops by now. Sure, laptops are smaller and portable and can hook up to your TV (when available), but they really lack in other areas. Keyboard size for many is an issue. Add to that, limited graphics performance for gaming and screen size. Using a cellphone magnifies those same issues. Now you are dealing with an even smaller "keyboard", tiny screen (unless your near a TV for future phones), and even less graphics processing power than modern laptops. All three devices have their place in the future. Yes cellphones are becoming smarter and much more versatile, but they are no replacement for either a desktop or a laptop.

I really don't know about RISC Vs x86 (pro's cons etc...) - but licensing the designs of ARM chips has obviously proven to be a fantastic business model and a strong 3rd entity in the market place is a welcome addition.

Nvidia are betting on ARM's success, given that they can't get a x86 license, they kinda have to. They have a fantastic opportunity are are getting heavily involed in RISC technology - providing a nice platform for the time when Intel takes off the gloves and engages ARM.

As for Microsoft, are they not already increasing their focus on the mobile opportunities?

Originally Posted by maverik-sg1I really don't know about RISC Vs x86 (pro's cons etc...) - but licensing the designs of ARM chips has obviously proven to be a fantastic business model and a strong 3rd entity in the market place is a welcome addition.

Nvidia are betting on ARM's success, given that they can't get a x86 license, they kinda have to. They have a fantastic opportunity reflected in the TEGRA platform - providing a nice platform for the time when Intel takes off the gloves and engages ARM.

As for Microsoft, are they not already increasing their focus on the mobile opportunities?

Honestly I don't think that the Atom is any competition for ARM. That isn't derogatory, but it just isn't competitve. I think Intel shouldn't try to make it competitive. What I think they need to do is make it THE chip for low performance, extremely low power draw x86 systems. Example, NAS, HTPC, print severs, etc. Something just powerful enough to handle all of your needs of network through put, disk access and 1080P streaming and not really any more, and do it with the lowest power draw possible.

It shouldn't be trying to take on smart phones, probably not even tablets, maybe netbooks.

The world doesn't need some arms race to make the most powerful smart phone ever. In a lot of cases there is a certain minimum level of compute power required, and anything in excess is just a waste. If you need a 1 gigaflop processor, a 10 gigaflop processor is just wasteful, you want to keep to that 1 gigaflop performance threshold, and innovate to make it lower power/cheaper/better instruction set pretty much in that order.

Originally Posted by azazel1024 If you need a 1 gigaflop processor, a 10 gigaflop processor is just wasteful, you want to keep to that 1 gigaflop performance threshold, and innovate to make it lower power/cheaper/better instruction set pretty much in that order.

You can never have enough gigaflops, but you make a valid point.

It's also valid to accept that software developers should be getting things more optimised/efficient to meet the same criteria - Crysis for example is not optimised.

As technology progresses and more integration becomes imminent, then you will need more power to handle such things.

Having an integrated system on a chip should at least be able to meet the requirement you stated above, but also have additonal power available on demand (something that can switch on and off like more cores, or ramp up the mhz based on the application) so that multi-tasking etc becomes much more useable.

Originally Posted by FizzbanSure. ARM may be winning with little things but Intel still...

lol! You do know that ARM designed chips sell by the hundreds of millions a year? The things are literally in everything, everywhere. Maybe matey should have said that Intel will never be able to displace them in the area they are good at.

"unit shipments in Q3 (our partners report royalties one quarter in arrears) increased 19% sequentially to a record 828 million units in the quarter. For the reported year, ARM partners shipped just under 3 billion units (2.9bn), up 18% on 2006 and are now at a run rate of ~9 million units per day."